Swing Time: A Novel

in which everything had been designed to be perfectly neutral, with all significant corners rounded, like an iPhone.

crazed buoyancy

formality or fear fell away,

My childhood took place in the widening gap.

Whereas my mother, in answering him, would stray into quite other topics: the importance of having a revolutionary consciousness, or the relative insignificance of sexual love when placed beside the struggles of the people, or the legacy of slavery in the hearts and minds of the young, and so on.

Did all friendships—all relations—involve this discreet and mysterious exchange of qualities, this exchange of power? Did it extend to peoples and nations or was it a thing that happened only between individuals?

We were all, at one and the same time, people she knew and loved but also objects of study,

In Tracey’s home, disappointment in the man was ancient history: they had never really had any hope in him, for he had almost never been at home.

My head wouldn’t go that far round.